Houdini

Snow piles in Houdini /  by Xuan Prada

In this video I will show you my process of building snow piles for your environments.
This might be a bit overkilling but it is a nice way of getting super detailed props for close up shots.
I basically use vellum grains to get a decent looking sim. Once the setup is done, you can get variations quickly and export single frames to build multiple props efficently.

All the info on my Patreon.

Intro to VEX for artists 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

I start the new year with an introduction to VEX for artists.
VEX is a crucial tool for any Houdini artists, it doesn't matter if you use Houdini for procedural modelling, environment creation, scene assembly and rendering or FX, you will have to use some VEX at some point.

This video covers the basics of VEX from scratch, there is no need to know any coding at all, and I will be making some basic examples along the way. From something very simple to more complicated setups.

My idea is to record 2 or 3 videos about VEX over the next few months,
This is the time to take your Houdini skills to the next level by understanding the most common uses of VEX.

Thanks!

Info on my Patreon.

Intro to TOPs /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

This month I bring you an introductory video about TOPs.
TOPs is Houdini network that allows you to automate processes (amon other things).
I use it quite a lot for creating variations or wedges, specially when building procedural assets, scattering systems or environments. I also use it a lot to create different variations for simulations, and I use it specially for wedging lighting when designing sequences. But you can really use it for anything in Houdini.

This is a two hours introduction to the TOPs workflow, I hope you find it useful.
All the info on my Patreon.

Houdini's window box /  by Xuan Prada

Hello,

I just published on my Patreon a video about Houdini’s window box.
This video is about how to use the new window box system in Houdini. One of those tools that I've been using for many years at different VFX studios, but now it works out of the box with Houdini and Karma. I hope you find it useful and you can start using it soon in your projects!

All the info on my Patreon site.

Solaris Katana interoperability part 2/2 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

In this video we will finish this mini series about Solaris and Katana interoperability.
I'll be covering the topics that I didn't have time to cover in the first video, including.

- Manual set dressing from Solaris to Katana.
- Hero instancing from Solaris to Katana.
- background instancing and custom attributes from Solaris to Katana.
- Dummy crowds from Solaris to Katana.
- Everything using USD of course.

There are many more things that could be covered when it comes to Solaris and Katana interoperability, I'm pretty sure that I'll be covering some of them in future USD videos.

All the info on my Patreon.

Solaris Katana interoperability part 1/2 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This is small trailer for the video Houdini Solaris / Katana interoperability part 1/2.
The full video is published only for Patrons.
The whole thing is divided in two videos, the first one is around 2.5 hours and hopefully next month I can publish the second video covering the rest of the topics.

In this first video we are covering.

- Working template in Solaris.
- Working template in Katana.
- Full assets from Solaris to Katana.
- Modifying/overriding looks in Katana.
- Geometry assets from Solaris to Katana.
- Publishing looks as KLF.
- Publishing looks as USD files.
- Full assembly USD files.

All the information on my Patreon.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Dummy crowds in Houdini Solaris /  by Xuan Prada

Quick video showing how to use one of my oldest tricks to create “dummy crowds“, but this time in Solaris, which makes this even easier and faster than using SOPs or MOPs.

I’ve used a flavour of this dummy crowds technique in many shots for a bunch of movies. It is very limited in so many ways, but when it works it works. You can populate your environments in minutes!

Please consider subscribing to my Patreon so I can keep making professional VFX training. Thanks. www.patreon.com/elephantvfx

Houdini Solaris and Katana. Custom attributes /  by Xuan Prada

This is a quick video showcasing how to use custom attributes in Houdini Solaris for USD scattering systems. The USD layer will be exported to Katana to do procedural look-dev using the exported custom parameters.

This technique will be explored in depth in my upcoming video about Houdini Solaris and Katana interoperability.

Subscribe to my Patreon to have full access to my entire library of visual effects training.
www.patreon.com/elephantvfx

USD in depth, part 06 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello everyone,

USD in depth part 06 is dropping today.
This time is all about lighting and rendering.

We will take a look at all the lighting/lookdev/rendering tools available in Solaris.
We will focus mainly on Karma, as it is the propietary Houdini rendering engine and hopefully something that we all can use in production soon.
We will introduce concepts like sequence lighting, shot overrides, interactive render filters, etc.

Some of the topics covered.

- Main takeaways.
- Scene preparation.
- Lighting workflow.
- Sequence lighting.
- Karma settings.
- Motion blur.
- DOF.
- AOVs.
- LPEs.
- Volume rendering.
- MaterialX.

This is a 6 hours long video, so brace yourselves.
All the info on my Patreon site.

Thanks!
Xuan.

USD in depth, part 05 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

Part 05 of the USD series is here.

This is a 3 hours video about working with FX layers in USD.
We will explore different situations where we will deal with roundtrips from LOPs to SOPs to LOPs. We will have a look at different types of FX that require different approaches when working with USD.

From vellum simulations, to rigid bodies or pyro simulations. Nothing very fancy but hopefully, it will give you the information that you need when dealing with FX layers of any kind.

We'll also look into the new USD features available in Houdini 19.5
All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Mix 05 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This mix is not really a mix. What I mean by that is that the two topics covered in this video have a relationship between each other but also with a topic that we will be discussing soon in the USD series.

In the first part of the video we are going to be talking about ingesting lidar scans of natural environments in our pipeline. We will process the lidars to be used as heightfields. Then, we will extract some attributes based on the pointcloud data, later we will create additional attributes that can be used for scattering and lookdev.

Finally, we will export all the data to be used in a different 3D software or in a game engine. Or just to be used in Houdini. Total flexibility.

In the second part of the video we will explore the basics of scattering and distribution in LOPs. This video covers how distribution works under the hood. We will explore random functions and noise patterns to create natural scattering similar to what we can find in nature.

Almost 6 hours of content divided in two videos.

Info on my Patreon webiste.

Thanks!
Xuan.

USD in depth, part 04 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

USD in depth part 04 is here.
In the last episode we talked about asset authoring in USD and Solaris. I spent many hours after that publishing all the assets from Aninmal Logic's lab scene using my asset creation HDA, in the way that I like to publish assets. Now that everything is ready we will move on to the next stages of the pipeline.

In this video we will talk about assembly, the process where we create a set using all the available assets created before. Solaris has multiple tools for assembling scenes, including references, the stage manager, the layout tool, the drop tool, instances, scatterers, etc. We will look into all of those.

Once the assembly is done, we will look into shot setups, where we will establish the structure of a shot, including all the elements that will be needed later on. Part of this process is also layout and set dressing, where we will be creating cameras a shot specific overrides.

We will publish a few USD layers that will be referenced by the animation department. In this step of the pipeline we will look into how to author animation directly in Solaris and also how to import USD animated caches coming from different DCCs to be used in a shot.

Another 3 plus hours of professional USD training plus a big data set ready to be used in Houdini Solaris.

All the info on my Patreon website.

Thanks!
Xuan.

USD in depth, part 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons!

USD in depth part 03 is here. This is where the action starts to happen.
We will spend around 3 hours in Houdini Solaris talking about asset creation.

I have a bunch of different scenarios that you will face while working with USD and assets. From very simple assets to more complicated ones with multiple variations for geometry and lookdev.

While exploring all the different options, we will create a re-usable template that you can use to standardize all your assets very quickly. We will also take a look at the component builder provided with the latest versions of Solaris that can also help you to prototype assets quickly.

As I said, about 3 hours of professional USD content that I'm hoping it can be useful for you when dealing with USD in the future.

This is the third video in a row about USD. Still a bunch of videos left to cover everything that I want to cover about USD at this point. But I'm thinking that we should take a break from USD in the next video. I know not everyone is super keen to learn USD (but you should!). I was planning to do one or two videos about professional photogrammetry, covering cross polarization and multiple cameras setup, surface scanning for PBR materials, drone photogrammetry and photometric capturing. Let me know what you think.

All the info on my Patreon site.

Thanks!

Xuan.

USD in depth, part 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

USD in depth part 02 is here.
This is another dense video, about 3 hours long talking about USD.
In the first video we talked about data and structuring, in this second video we will be talking about composition in USD.

USD layers can be written and read in different ways, it is very important to know how to use the different composition arcs, specifiers, and everything else that composes a USD file. This will dictate the way you structure your assets and your whole USD pipeline.

Another heavy video, so be patient and drink coffe, you will need both.

All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks!
Xuan.

USD in depth, part 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

I'm starting a new series called "USD in depth", where I will be exploring everything USD related. As you probably know USD is a new standard pipeline system/file format based on layers that contain scene descriptions. It is supported by the VFX platform and is or will be the core of many visual effects studios and animation companies around the globe.

In this first video (more than 3 hours) we will be talking about what defines USD. Type of data, USD structure, terminology, attributes and layers. This is a very dense video, so grab a pot of coffee and enjoy.

All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Mix 04 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

First video of 2022 will be a mix of topics.

The first part of the video will be dedicated to talk about face building and face tracking in Nuke. Using these tools and techniques will allow us to generate 3D heads and faces using only a few photos with the help of AI. Once we have the 3D model, we should be able to track and matchmove a shot to do a full head replacement or to extend/enhance some facial features.

In the second part of the video I will show you a technique that I used while working on Happt Feet to generate foot prints and foot trails. A pretty neat technique that relies on transferring information between surfaces instead of going full on with complex simulations.

This is a 3.30 hours video, so grab yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy!
All the information on my Patreon channel.

As always, thanks for your support!

Xuan.

VDB as displacement /  by Xuan Prada

The sphere is the surface that needs to be deformed by the presence of the cones. The surface can't be modified in any way, we need to stick to its topology and shape. We want to do this dynamically just using a displacement map but of course we don't want to sculpt the details by hand, as the animation might change at any time and we would have to re-sculpt again.

The cones are growing from frame 0 to 60 and moving around randomly.

I'm adding a for each connected piece and inside the loop adding an edit to increase the volume of the original cones a little bit.

Just select all in the group field, and set the transform space to local origin by connectivity, so each cone scales from it's own center.

Add a vdb from polygons, set it to distance VDB and add some resolution, it doesn't need to be super high.

Then I just cache the VDB sequence.

Create an attribute from volume to pass the Cd attribute from the vdb cache to the sphere.

To visualize it better you can just add a visualizer mapped to the attribute.

In shading, create an user data float and read the Cd attribute and connect it to the displacement.

If you are looking for the opposite effect, you can easily invert the displacement map.

Detailing digi doubles using generic humans /  by Xuan Prada

This is probably the last video of the year, let's see about that.

This time is all about getting your concept sculpts into the pipeline. To do this, we are going to use a generic humanoid, usually provided by your visual effects studio. This generic humanoid would have perfect topology, great uv mapping, some standard skin shaders, isolation maps to control different areas, grooming templates, etc.

This workflow will speed drastically the way you approach digital doubles or any other humanoid character, like this zombie here.

In this video we will focus mainly on wrapping a generic character around any concep sculpt to get a model that can be used for rigging, animation, lookdev, cfx, etc. And once we have that, we will re-project back all the details from the sculpt and we will apply high resolution displacement maps to get all the fine details like skin pores, wrinkles, skin imperfections, etc.

The video is about 2 hours long and we can use this character in the future to do some other videos about character/creature work.

All the info on my Patreon site.

Thanks!

Xuan.

Lookdev rig for Houdini /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

In this video I show you how to create a production ready lookdev rig for Houdini, or what I like to call, a single click render solution for your lookdevs.

It is in a way similar to the one we did for Katana a while ago, but using all the power and flexibility of Houdini's HDA system.

Talking about HDA's, I will be introducing the new features for HDA's that come with Houdini 18.5.633 that I think are really nice, specially for smaller studios that don't have enough resources to build a pipeline around HDA's.

By the end of this video you should be able to build your own lookdev tool and adapt it to the needs of your projects.

We'll be working with the latest versions of Houdini, Arnold and ACES.

As usually, the video starts with some slides where I try to explain why building a lookdev rig is a must before you do any work on your project, don't skip it, I know it is boring but very much needed. Downloadable material will be attached in the next post.

Thank you very much for your support!

Head over to my Patreon feed.

Xuan.